Tuesday, June 17, 2008

All proceeds from today's Bizarro cartoon will benefit the Tots for Totscampaign.

I like potatoes. I'm not afraid of them, I don't buy into the Atkins nonsense that carbs will kill you. Fried potatoes will kill you, but it's the fat and cholesterol in the oil, not the potato doing the lion's share of the work. Animal flesh has plenty of that stuff, too.

I eat tons of carbs every day (plus some plant protein), in the form of natural, whole plant foods, and I have no weight problem, no cholesterol issues (the good or bad kind), plenty of energy and health and very low blood pressure. Every single other person in my family battles these issues, so it isn't just genetics.

But I do love me a French fry. I eat them on occasion – not daily, of course – and man, there are far worse-tasting things you could put in your mouth. If I met a French fry woman like the one above, I might leave my wife for her. If I found out French women taste like fries, same risk. Don't tell CHNW.

By the way, the Atkins diet is reported to make you lose weight and though I've never tried it, I have observed that Atkins himself weighs much less now.

15 comments:

are you really wanting to talk about the "taste" of french women here? i mean i could...but your wife is crazy or so you say and i am thinking that that is a very bad idea. but they are like a fine wine...

There is a lot to be learned from how diabetics need to eat - it's all about regulating blood sugar.

Most processed foods have carbs that convert to sugars very quickly and make you feel lousy (no matter who you are - diabetic or not). Even a simple change like eating Basmati rice instead of regular white rice can make a big difference. Of course, brown rice is even better - any whole grain.

Atkins diet works well except for the fact it jacks up all the nasty stuff in your blood that causes heart disease and can kill you. It does nothing to teach a person how to eat to maintain a healthy weight.

As far as the vegan diet goes, of course it's going to produce good results, because meats take more effort to break down - they're harder on the body in general. Hunter-gatherer homo sapien didn't have the luxury of going into the store for gobs of packaged flesh. We're just not designed to eat primarily protein (unlike a cat).

So the question for Dan: you said you're not too into tofu (and honestly, a Tofurkey sounds creepy to me), so what ARE your favorite vegan protein replacements? It's all well and good to promote veganism and PETA, but a lot of people are shut down to the idea because the diet is too drastic from what they currently eat.

I'm not Dan( he draws better, but I got the looks ), but to get a better idea of what vegans eat you can look at these sites:

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=29

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=30

http://beforewisdom.com/blog/?p=134

Aside from tofu, and a myriad of ways to prepare it there are many, MANY soy foods. Other big protein sources are legumes. There are about a dozen varieties in any urban area and hundreds of recipes. There are also dozens of whole grains as well as nuts. Many, many recipes.

Rebecca C. Brown said... Hey Dan, you might know this already, but ... even fat and oil, if they are plant-derived, contain zero cholesterol. Not a nanodrop. Only animal products contain cholesterol. Hooray for plants!

Rebecca;

That is no longer believed to be true. Plant foods do have cholesterol, such foods just have so little cholesterol that the amounts could never be measured. Alas there is new equipment that can measure the neglible amount of cholesterol that plant foods do have:

i tried the atkins diet back in high school for about a month and it was awful. i also was not nearly as environmentally/nutritionally conscious as i am today, so i still ate a copious amount of meat without a second thought. i also worked at skyline chili (well-known for their coney-dogs and chili.. very gross and terribly unhealthy), so guess what i ate at my lunch break? hot dogs in a bowl covered with chili and cheese. and i thought i was eating healthier by cutting the carbs! i lost maybe 5lbs, and immediately gained it back as soon as i ate a piece of bread. my boyfriend(at the time)'s mom was HUGE on the atkin's diet and she actually lost a shit-ton of weight. she also became clinically anorexic and a member of AA.... but she lost the weight! it almost ruined her marriage too.

i'm just glad i'm a little smarter now and know the difference between some fad-diet and a real, consciously working diet that changes your behavior and not just the numbers on the scale.